David Tisch
Managing Partner, BoxGroup. On 2 shows, 6 appearances, plus 2 compilation re-airs not counted. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
investorfounderexecutive@davetisch ↗LinkedIn ↗davidtisch.com ↗Wikipedia ↗Instagram ↗
David Tisch is the Managing Partner of BoxGroup, an early-stage venture capital firm that has backed hundreds of prominent startups including Plaid, Stripe, Warby Parker, Ro, Airtable, and Ramp. Beyond co-founding Techstars New York City and serving as Chairman of GoodDog, he previously led the Startup Studio at Cornell Tech.
2shows
6appearances
131statements
15resolved
12supported
1contradicted
80%fully supported
21said about them ↓ Everything David Tisch said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Tisch: Investors should pay any valuation for generational seed companies
“If you fund a generational company and the outcome is insanely enormous, you should say yes to whatever that number is at the seed stage.”
Tisch: Second and third-tier venture capital firms suck and are harmful
“I think the second The third tier VCs are uninteresting, and I think the third tier VCs are harmful, but I think the best ex-firms at each stage are good enough to not need to overly rank them. But I think the second and third tier VCs suck.”
Tisch: VC signaling is a fake concept that does not exist
“I don't believe in signaling. I think it's a fake word and I don't think it exists in this market.”
Tisch: Outside the top 25 VCs, investors are commodities or net negatives
“I don't think outside of the top five to 25 VCs, individuals, that VCs can magically impact a company. I think most of those investors join your board at series A or B, and they, those five to 25, whatever the number is, and the rest of the investment Sort of …”
Tisch: VCs never cause startup success, only failure
“The company's either going to work or not work. And you are not the reason for either of those two things. If anything, you're the reason it's not going to work.”
Tisch: VCs who overpaid deserve no sympathy; valuation is their problem
“The valuation to me is the investor's problem. And I just don't like, I don't believe that my sympathy sits for all the VCs that overpaid on things that they did. Like, everybody could, again, back to this, like, you could have said no. If you thought somethin…”
Tisch: Signaling risk is the single most overstated concept in startup financing
“The signaling risk, I feel like is the single most overstated part of the ecosystem.”
Tisch: A startup CEO's core job is becoming world-class at fundraising
“Telling founders, like, put your head down, build a product. Don't worry about fundraising. It's like distracting and annoying. The CEO specifically, their job is to become great at fundraising, and they need to be, like, view that as a core competency that th…”
Tisch: A tier-three VC attempted to personally bankrupt a startup founder
“I saw a VC try to personally bankrupt a founder.”
Tisch: VC returns depend on outlier companies, not rigid ownership targets
“Every VC's math works if you fund great companies. And so it's not about this, like, ownership threshold.”
Tisch: Signaling risk from multi-stage seed investments is an overrated myth
“I think that the myth of sort of you take a seed check from a multi-stage firm, especially in this market, that you are going to struggle to raise your next round if that firm doesn't sort of write the term sheet. I think that's been proven to not be a materia…”
Tisch: VCs cannot deploy 'company building' value at scale across portfolios
“And so the idea that a diverse portfolio is amongst the VC can deploy this value add and company building at scale. I just haven't seen that happen over my 10 years doing this.”
Tisch: The market has too many companies, diluting top startup talent
“I think there are too many companies. So I think the idea that every company is going to succeed and every company deserves to be funded through a series C, that's a risk to me. So there's a massive dilution of talent in our industry in that when everybody sta…”
Venture capital investors do not add value to startups
“When entrepreneurs in a meeting ask us, you know, what value do we add? My initial response is always, investors don't add value, and that's what we'll promise you.”
Tisch: Government blocking Plaid acquisition chilled big tech M&A
“Plaid sold, right? Plaid sold and the government stopped it. And I think that that was you know, to me, a interesting moment in The government getting involved in something that was debatable, and I think it also tells big companies, like, don't waste your tim…”
Tisch: Small stakes in outlier companies outperform strict ownership targets
“Every VC's math works if you fund great companies. And so it's not about This, like, ownership threshold. If anybody owned one percent of Facebook, one percent of Uber.1% of Coinbase, your math works. Your math works really well, and it scales.”
Tisch: All VC firms offer the same commoditized product
“I think at the end of the day, for the most part, all VCs offer the same product. We are giving money and we are taking equity. What comes after that is obfuscated in a sales pitch.”
Tisch: Seed investing cannot be indexed or made low-margin
“I don't think you can index seed, and I don't think you can aggregate seed into a low margin product.”
Tisch: Pre-Series B investing is art, post-Series B is math
“I think venture is two different jobs. There's the pre-series B job, and there's the post-series B job, and I don't think they have any relation to each other. I think at pre-series B, you are doing more art, and at post-series B, you are doing more math.”
Tisch: Any BoxGroup team member can individually approve an investment
“So we're a team of nine. Everyone on our team can say yes in an individual meeting. We don't need, we don't vote. We don't try to find groupthink.”
Tisch: BoxGroup forbids team members from 'throwing grenades' on deals
“We structurally push our group to not allow that. We have vocabulary internally. We say, like, throwing a grenade. You're not allowed to throw a grenade on some deal. It doesn't help.”
Tisch: Venture power law ensures top incumbent firms stay dominant
“The best firms in venture have the highest probability of being the best firms in the future, because brand matters, the quality of investors at that brand matter, and they're going to see and win better than the challengers are.”
Tisch: Scaling $1B to $5B is more predictable than $0 to $1B
“The path from zero to one billion Is impossible. The path from one billion to five billion is more predictable, and it's more easy to see at a given moment”
The other half of the tape: David Tisch's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 19 times in 13 episodes across the shows. 2 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 14TJ Parker 2Mark Mullen 1Deven Parekh 1
Statements about David Tisch, by other people (2)
BoxGroup raised over $160 million across two first external vehicles
“Recently, they raised their first external capital with two separate vehicles totaling over a hundred and sixty million dollars.”
Stebbings: David Tisch made early angel investments in Vine and Warby Parker
“Prior to smashing the world of seed with Box, David was managing director of Techstars New York, and was a prolific angel investor alongside it, making early angel investments in the likes of Vine and Warby Parker, to name a few.”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 18
TBPN 1
2025 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode
2023 7 mentions in 4 episodes 2 per episode
- Mike Maples: Lessons from SVB; Crisis Management Tips; USD's Status as the Reserve Currency | E993 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- TJ Parker: Building PillPack, The First E-Commerce Pharmacy, to Amazon's $1B Acquisition | E1022 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Rob Lacher: How I Scaled to $600M AUM; Hiring Tips for VCs; Venture Capital in Europe vs USA | E999 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Ophelia Brown: How We Raised $432M in a Pandemic; What's New in European Venture Capital | E990 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- every mention in 2023, scene by scene →
2022 1 mention in 1 episode
2021 6 mentions in 3 episodes 2 per episode
- 20VC: Insight Managing Director, Deven Parekh on The Current Funding Mania, Compression of Round Timelines, Fund Deployment Speeds Increasing & How To Think Through Price and Time Allocation Across the Portfolio
- 20VC: Optimising Investment Decision-Making in Compressed Fundraising Timelines & A Deep Dive on Portfolio Construction, Price Sensitivity and The Importance of Ownership with Mark Mullen, Co-Founder @ Bonfire Ventures
- 20VC: Ramp's Eric Glyman on Why You Should Never Take The Highest Price, Working With Venture Funds vs Crossover Funds and How To Determine What To Buy vs Build as a Founder Today?
- every mention in 2021, scene by scene →
2019 1 mention in 1 episode
2016 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode
- 20VC: Greenfield Opportunities For Machine Learning, Why Massive Corporates Finally See It's Potential & Why VC's Investment Decision Making Process Needs To Change with James Cham, Partner @ Bloomberg Beta
- 20 VC FF 029: VC vs Angel Funding & The Future of E-Commerce with Ivan Mazour, Founder @ Ometria
- every mention in 2016, scene by scene →
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens David's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20VCLEDGER | Managing Partner, BoxGroup | 5 +2 | 121 | 79% 11/14 | full record on 20VC → |
| TBPNLEDGER | Managing Partner, BoxGroup | 1 | 10 | 100% 1/1 | full record on TBPN → |